No, you don't need a realtor. just find a house you like (I used realtor.com to find my 3 houses) and go from there. You just have to see if the house is HUD approved is all. Basically, what I did was bought one house using the 203K and I am living in it the required amount of time so that I don't have to repay it all. Then I also used the 203K to buy a couple flood houses which I got for $10k-$20k each. then used the 203K portion to make them inhabitable and am TRYING to resell them. One kind of "loop hole" is that the house just has to be in your name for that 5 years, you do not have to live there, you can rent it out and after 5 years you don't have to repay it all.